“Staten Island case takes turn as judge boots attorney likened by client to ‘Godfather’ character” —

• “A high-profile defense attorney was removed from two federal cases tied to Staten Island, after prosecutors cited recorded conversations in which a client with alleged mob ties claimed the lawyer had knowledge of his criminal dealings.”
• “On Wednesday, a federal judge determined that attorney Joseph Corozzo Jr. had a conflict of interest in one case, which disqualified him from representing his client. The court’s ruling came days after Corozzo Jr. was removed from a separate case that involved an alleged international drug operation.”
  “Corozzo Jr., of Manhattan-based Rubenstein & Corozzo, did not return a request for comment Thursday. Judge Brian M. Cogan handed down the decision in Brooklyn federal court.”
• “The case from which Corozzo was most recently disqualified is centered around alleged mob associate Mark Liverano, 59, of Annadale.”
• “Liverano is accused of extortion and other crimes while allegedly participating in a loansharking scheme, an illegal gambling operation and a black market cannabis business. He also was facing weapons charges in a nine-count indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in December.”
• “In court documents, prosecutors stated Liverano at one point ‘referred to Mr. Corozzo as ‘Tom Hagen’ — a fictional character from ‘The Godfather’ who was both a lawyer and crime family consigliere.’”
• “In another conversation, Liverano discussed his hope that he would join ‘a crew’ that reported to Corozzo’s family, prosecutors alleged.”
  Feds allege ‘fully entangled’”
• “Federal prosecutors accused Corozzo of being ‘fully entangled’ in Liverano’s criminal conduct, which they argued would become an issue at trial. They alleged Liverano told another organized crime associate that Corozzo knew about his illegal gambling operation and would help enable its expansion.”
• “‘The defendant also directed an associate to contact Mr. Corozzo in the event the defendant was no longer able to collect his illegal loansharking payments,’ prosecutors stated.”
• “Prosecutors cited evidence of a personal relationship outside court dealings, including that Corozzo served as best man at Liverano’s wedding and that the two traveled to Europe together.”
• “Last week, Corozzo was ordered by a judge to remove himself from the case of Goran Gogic, a former professional boxer from Montenegro who stands accused of operating an international drug trafficking operation.”
• “Gogic is accused of helping organize a large-scale cocaine smuggling operation from South America to Europe and the United States.”
• “As that case was approaching trial, three men from Staten Island were accused of trying to bribe a juror with up to $100,000 in cash.”
• “‘Mr. Corozzo is the subject of an ongoing investigation into jury bribery and obstruction’ in the federal case against Gogic and others, prosecutors argued recently in court documents.”
• “Court documents alleged that ‘several conspirators participated in a scheme to approach and attempt to bribe Juror-1 with a cash payment in exchange for Juror-1 agreeing to vote not guilty at Gogic’s trial.’”
• “‘To the government’s knowledge, the only individuals with access to the juror list were court staff, the Assistant United States Attorneys handling the defendant’s prosecution, the defendant, and Mr. Corozzo,’ prosecutors argued in court documents.”
• “Corozzo and his law firm responded in court filings, saying the allegations were ‘baseless.’”
• “Corozzo’s uncle, Nicholas Corozzo, is a reputed made member of the Gambino family. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2009 after being convicted in connection with two murders and racketeering schemes, according to multiple media reports.”
• “The attorney’s late father, Joseph ‘JoJo’ Corozzo, was accused of being a consigliere for the Gambino crime family and an associate of mobster John Gotti. The father was convicted on racketeering and extortion charges in 2008 in connection with a federal Gambino takedown. In that case, a then-Staten Island man who owned a trucking company in Travis cooperated with the government.”

“Big Law’s Alleged M&A Insider Traders Switched Firms With Ease” —

• “US charges that three M&A lawyers exploited client secrets for financial gain raise questions as to how they got hired at seven different Big Law firms over the course of their alleged crime spree.”
• “One of the three, Nicolo Nourafchan, worked at Sidley Austin, Latham & Watkins and Goodwin Procter between 2013 and 2023, federal indictments allege. After four years at Sidley, Latham brought him on and fired him after about two years. Goodwin next gave him a job before dismissing him in a couple years.”
• “He allegedly committed crimes at all three firms. Neither the indictments nor statements from Latham and Goodwin indicate the firms had knowledge of the alleged criminal activity. Latham and Goodwin didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about why they fired Nourafchan.”
• “‘There’s kind of a presumption that you’re working with honest folks in the vetting process because of the other higher powers outside of an employer who have stronger investigatory tools and more incentives to catch this stuff,’ said Mathew Brown, a Washington DC-based legal recruiter. ‘A little skepticism about asking folks hard questions might be warranted going forward.’”
• “The allegations highlight how several large law firms can be dragged into wide-reaching white collar criminal investigations by a few bad actors. Big Law attorneys frequently change firms in today’s hiring market, and if they’ve been involved in illegal activity, recruiters say, it’s not always easy to filter them out.”
• “‘There’s no way, if you’re a firm of 1,500 lawyers, every lawyer you’re going to get is going to uphold their fiduciary duty to clients,’ said Jon Truster, a New York-based recruiter with Macrae. ‘I don’t know how firms are supposed to control this.’”
• “One of the other defendants, Gabriel Gershowitz, who is cooperating with the federal investigation, also worked at three law firms over a roughly 15-year period—Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and DLA Piper. He allegedly stole information from each of them for insider trading.”
• “Brown said if firms are not aware of a lawyer’s crimes, it becomes ‘quite difficult’ for a prospective employer to do any vetting that would catch any sort of criminal activity. ‘If they’re fired for suspicious activity, that’s not criminal,’ he said.”
• “When previously reached for comment on the allegations, Latham said Nourafchan hasn’t worked at the firm for five years and that the alleged conduct would constitute a violation of its policies. Goodwin said it was ‘deeply disappointed’ in the former employee and that it’s cooperating with law enforcement.”
• “Latham in July 2020 told Nourafchan he would be let go in the following month, according to the federal documents. By the time he was fired he had already allegedly fed information about deals involving Care.com and Zagg to his co-conspirators, according to the indictment. After the firm notified him of the firing, he accessed confidential information about Momenta, the indictment states.”
• “Within a year, Nourafchan got a job at Goodwin Procter. He worked there until September of 2023 when the firm fired him, the indictment states. During his time at the firm, Nourafchan allegedly used deal information about firm clients—including Citrix, and iRobot.”
• “The firm told Nourafchan in June of 2023 it was firing him in September. That didn’t stop him from using confidential information about a potential acquisition of NextGen in August to help co-conspirators allegedly buy securities, according to the complaint.”

“Everyone’s a winner in the Dentons AML case!” —

• “The proceedings arise out of work done by Dentons between 2013 and 2017 for ‘Client A’, treated internally as a politically exposed person and high AML risk. The SRA’s case focused on whether the firm took ‘adequate measures’ to establish source of wealth and source of funds, as required by regulation 14 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2007.”
• “In March 2024 the SDT found Dentons had breached regulation 14, but dismissed the SRA’s allegations that this amounted to breaches of Principle 7 of the SRA Principles 2011 (comply with legal and regulatory obligations) and Outcome 7.5 of the 2011 Code of Conduct (comply with legislation applicable to the business, including AML).”
• “The SDT’s rationale was that, on the facts found, the breach was not ‘serious, reprehensible or culpable’ enough to justify the label of professional misconduct.”
• “In 2025 the High Court quashed that decision, essentially accepting the SRA’s ‘strict’ approach that a proved legal breach automatically establishes a professional breach, and sent the matter back to a fresh SDT panel.”
• “But it rejected the High Court’s underlying reasoning on one point of wider importance: the court held that an allegation of professional misconduct under the SRA Principles and Code carries an inherent requirement of seriousness. A breach of legislation (including AML legislation) is not, therefore, automatically misconduct.”
• “However, it modified the original SDT judgement on this question, which was whether ‘serious, culpable and reprehensible conduct’ had been proved. The Court of Appeal held that this was not the correct test to use.”
• “In framing the test, the Court endorsed an objective professional-standard lens: whether the conduct would be regarded by competent and reputable solicitors as sufficiently serious to be categorised as professional misconduct.”
• “It also indicated unease with the SDT’s characterisation of the breach as ‘entirely inadvertent’, noting difficulties with that conclusion given the risk indicators recorded within the firm.”
• “However, the Court of Appeal did not itself make the misconduct finding; it left it to the tribunal to decide, on those findings, whether the seriousness threshold is met and, if so, what sanction follows.”
• “The practical effect is a more focused rehearing rather than a full-scale rerun of every allegation.”
• “For the SRA, the judgment may limit the attraction of a ‘strict liability’ route to misconduct where an underlying legal breach is proved. Therefore, it is fair to say that a breach of the AML regulations is not going to automatically be a misconduct breach.”
• “It may also reduce the broader use of Regulatory Settlement Agreements which are often used in AML breach cases particularly. Our article here considered whether these are always used fairly and appropriately: the Dentons case may help to inform a shift in how the SRA uses them.”
• “For firms, it is not a get out of jail-free card either: the court has made clear that AML compliance failures can still amount to misconduct where they cross the seriousness line. It has signalled that tribunals should not assume that ‘good faith’ or an absence of deliberate wrongdoing automatically keeps a breach on the ‘technical’ side of that line.”
• “The case is also a reminder that inherited relationships (post merger, post acquisition, or via lateral moves) create particular governance stress-tests: this all stemmed from the fact that a legacy firm hadn’t followed the Dentons centralised approach.”
• “As we march forward, there are going to be more cases where these ‘newer’ regulations are the ones applied, and this will be more helpful, as these are the ones which are going to be largely more relevant.”
• “Additionally, AML breaches will often turn on the application of the risk-based approach: it may be arguable in some cases that an alleged AML breach wasn’t, in fact, an AML breach, meaning that any associated misconduct could fall away.”
• “Finally, there is the potential of an uncomfortable message going out towards the profession. This judgement may uphold the fact that not every AML breach is automatically misconduct: that doesn’t mean, however, that every AML breach is ok.”
• “There is a danger that, in embracing the judgement too fulsomely, we lose sight of the fact that AML breaches – whether inadvertent or deliberate – are not good things. They are things that we must, and must want to, avoid. Many MLROs and Compliance Managers may have used the potential of a misconduct finding as a stick to bolster AML compliance amongst their solicitors: it’s a valid thing to do, and it will remain so.”
• “Regardless of this judgment, we should set a high bar for AML compliance: we have policies and procedures for a reason, and they need to be followed.”